16 Ch. 14. Henry the Improved education of the lesser nobility. Domestic architecture EDUCATION OF THE NOBLES. families or rank. Of the Tudor nobility none, perhaps, was destitute of the rudiments of education. Some of them were remarkable for learning, for eloquence, and civil wisdom. Henry himself was not devoid of polemical talent, and indulged the ambition of engaging in controversy with the great heretic of the age. In the reign of Elizabeth, gross ignorance in a man of rank would have been as disgraceful as the least tincture of letters would have been a mark of distinction not, perhaps, highly honourable in his grandsire. The sons of the lesser nobility, instead of being sent to the castles of the great barons for such an education as the tilt-yard and the hall could furnish, were taught to be more useful members of society than knights-errant and squires of dames. The practice became prevalent of sending youths to schools and universities both at home and abroad. Many young gentlemen applied to the study of the law, which, after the Reformation, became exclusively the profession of the laity. Some were sent to learn the art of amassing fortunes in the booths and warehouses of the city; and for many a year the apprentices of London were famed for their high spirit and audacious bearing. It is hardly possible that society can attain of the Middle a high standard, without the ordinary comforts and decencies of domestic life. Ecclesiastical and military architecture attained perfection. Ages. b Several facsimiles of these curious signatures are to be found in the Appendix to the Paston Letters. MODES OF DOMESTIC LIFE. 17 Condition of residences. during the Middle Ages. The magnificent temples Ch. 14. still extant, as well as those abandoned to decay, the huge castles and mouldering keeps, are striking baronial monuments of superstitious and turbulent times. But the fortresses raised by the pride and grandeur of men who must be considered as petty princes rather than feudal barons, were designed for the accommodation of numerous military retainers, and for security against attack. The internal arrangements of these structures made no provision for domestic privacy. The great hall was the common resort for the whole household, and for visitors and wayfarers of every description. The small unglazed windows near the ceiling, while they let in rain and wind, hardly admitted the day. Without the ventilation, however, which such apertures afforded, the atmosphere of the apartment would have been insupportable. The accumulated odours of viands, of smoke half returned from the imperfect chimney, of human beings of every description, men-at-arms, footmen, serving-men, minstrels, wandering friars, devotees under vows against clean linen, and mendicants swarming with vermin, dogs and cats, and, beyond all, the stench arising from the untold abominations of the floor, on which layers of rushes were spread, like the compost of a farm-yard, must frequently have bred pestilence, had it not been for the current of fresh air which continually circulated through the chamber. A bed was a luxury rarely found in the castles and mansions of the 18 DWELLINGS OF THE GENTRY Ch. 14. Plantagenet nobility; separate chambers were also rare; and, for the most part, knights and ladies, horseboys and scullions, littered down in one common dormitory, after a fashion which would hardly be tolerated now in a well-appointed Refuge for the Destitute. Houses of the gentry. Elizabethan mansions. The dwellings of the inferior gentry, though not pretending to belong to the class of fortified houses, were constructed mainly with a view to defence against robbery and violence. A moat generally surrounded the building, and the access to the upper apartments was by an external staircase, which was drawn up like a portcullis. The interior arrangements, like those of the baronial castles, were deficient in almost every provision for comfort and decency. Few of the manor houses built before the time of the Tudors, are now occupied by gentry; and those which are so inhabited, have undergone considerable alterations, both within and without; some of them are still used as farm-houses and dwellings for labourers. It was not until the reign of Elizabeth that any considerable progress was made in domestic architecture. Many of the most commodious and stately mansions, inhabited by the rural aristocracy, date from this period; and beyond some points of detail, it may be doubted whether any improvement has been made on the fine old English manorhouse of the sixteenth century. • Domestic Architecture of the Middle Ages, 75. ACCESSION OF HENRY THE SEVENTH. Ch. 14. the barons. 19 The warlike and insolent nobility of the Middle Ages having almost perished during the wars of the Roses, the politic prince, whose accession terminated these conflicts, sought, by every means, to prevent the revival of an order, the ascendancy of which was incompatible, not only with monarchical power, but with all regular government. To mortify and impoverish the great barons was Repression of the avowed aim of the house of Tudor. Many of them, under frivolous pretexts, were subjected to heavy amercements; not a few were banished, or brought to the block. A new order of nobility replaced the knights and barons, who had perished under the rival standards of Plantagenet. Politicians and courtiers grew into importance, and occupied the seats of the Bohuns and the Cliffords. The high officers of state were no longer selected from the great Norman families; but new men were appointed, and raised over the heads of peers, whose proud names were inscribed in the roll of Battel, and whose emblazonry had dazzled the infidel on the fields of Palestine. Some of these adventurers, the first of the statesmen of modern times, by their wisdom and virtue, justified their elevation. Others were the mere creatures of royal caprice, such as in days not long gone by, the insulted barons would have hurled from the steps of the throne and consigned to the hangman. Desperate attempts, indeed, were made by the barons, even at an advanced period of the reign of Elizabeth, to recover, by violence, their lost power; 20 Ch. 14. Increased power of the Crown. Disagree ments between ROYAL PREROGATIVE. but these were promptly suppressed, and the insurgents suffered the extreme penalties of their treason. Once, also, in the fire of youth, Henry the Eighth essayed to revive the splendour of the old military games; but the Field of the Cloth of Gold was a failure hardly less signal than that of the Eglinton Tournament. The age of chivalry was gone in 1520, as surely as in 1840. Between the suppression of the old feudal aristocracy and the rise of the middle class, there was an interval, during which monarchy attained a vigour little short of absolute power. Some writers, in their zeal for liberty, have ingeniously argued, that at no time were the English kings free from constitutional restraint. The native English spirit would, no doubt, always operate as a check upon the exercise of power; but after the suppression of the great feudal oligarchy, which had so long overawed the Crown, there was, for a time, no appreciable control over prerogative. Consequently, the government of the Tudors was far more arbitrary than that of any of their predecessors. It was the misfortune rather than the fault of the Stuarts, that they had to encounter the development of a new and portentous power in the state, which was itself to assume some of the most important functions of sovereignty, and to circumscribe monarchy within the narrowest limits. The struggle between the Crown and the Comthe Commons mons, more formidable than the strife which had occasionally raged between the Crown and the and the Crown. |